School refusing to provide translator

The schools dont have the money for it so it doesnt matter if it is best practise.
Even if they do have the money it is not the remit of providing education to the child.
and technically not even educating the parent. It is unheloful to the child and family and wider community.
techni cally parents evening are optional for parents so if they choose to not learn enough to understand that is up to them.

just agree to discuss issues in writing

DCs are there to help translate....yeah cause of course the kids will tell the absolute truth if there's a problem lolol

It’s not a governors matter. Their role is strategic. It’s not something they have any means to investigate. They also don’t have a role in deciding how a school operates with parents on a day to day basis. This is down to the head.

LAs don’t have money for this. At a parents evening, Dc are often there anyway. It’s perfectly ok for them to talk to their parents. However a school cannot reach every parent. They rarely get all parents engaging who do speak English! So you do what you can, but school money is for educating Dc, not helping parents who won’t engage.

Children interpreting for their parents is NOT good practice for the eight millionth time. It is inappropriate in a lot of cases and there is some evidence that it is harmful for children, especially older ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_brokering.

Who should find out why parents aren't attending? I would suggest it could be something the board of governors / PTA could look at rather than the hard-pressed staff. Or working in a team with the local council community engagement team.

Who do you think should be doing this though? School staff are pretty busy and it's not a quick thing to do, is it?

Being disengaged from your child's education is not limited to parents from immigrant communities, its a fairly widespread phenomenon. It's always tempting to think schools must provide the universal panacea for societies ills but yhe fact is they can't and they need to concentrate on their job which is educating the children under their care.

We have some children in our school from Ukraine although definitely not 80% and had no translators. We used Google translate and now after less than a year the children understand English brilliantly and often help translate messages to their parents 🙂

I agree that it’s almost always to do with diminishing resources, and this sort of thing should be centrally or at least LA funded.

Still taxpayers' money, whoever is funding it.

It's a good question isn't it

Beyond the lazy and entitled immigrants, the socially conservative husbands keeping mothers cloistered at home, poor mental health due to poverty/trauma/war, conflict with work commitments, not being aware of the classes etc there are probably a multitude of other reasons

How you'd find out I guess is another matter

Texting just 30 parents to confirm yes/no to attending a childrens party gets lots of non-responders - let alone sending 400 texts in the right language to the right person with a question requiring more than a yes/no answer to people of unknown literacy

Not impossible but not easy

And maybe it's already been done OP didn't say either way

I learnt English when I was in kindergarten, English definitely is not my first language. Language is the thing that you have to speak/read/listen everyday. My reading and writing skills is fair, listening is improving, oral is poor because I’ve got no local friends here. I feel nervous and my tongue twists when I am talking to school mums. I do afraid of speaking “weird English” that make people cannot understand me or misunderstand me.

People like us cannot only rely on translator. My 4yo son is my motivation to pick up English again. Now I learn English by watching news, Netflix (I had done all 10 seasons of FRIENDS and now has been watching Harry Potter), scroll through IG (many people teaches languages by self role playing), and go here the forum to not only read and write but also to learn more about the culture, in order to avoid being impolite accidentally.

Has anyone tried to find out why parents are not attending the free classes or are we just going with the lazy and entitled narrative?

I lived abroad for years. The country where I lived provided extensive help for foreigners who didn't speak the local language, including interpreters when needed. DH and I learned the local language and at different points, we both benefitted from employment opportunities that related to supporting other foreigners who didn't speak the language. So the UK is not the only country that does this kind of thing. In fact, I would say that the country where I lived actually did far more to support foreign residents because there was not an assumption that they would speak the local language in the same way that we generally expect people to speak English.

Parents not attending free language classes reminds me a bit of when our local GP surgery started doing Saturday morning surgeries in response to people saying surgery hours were inconvenient for working people.

The Saturday slot was abandonned after 6 months because it was barely used - in fact I'd not heard about it until it was cancelled [this was before mass texting so probably would be better advertised now]

Similarly the health clinic offering appts in the evening wasn't attended at all

I would suggest that the service be used for the most vital meetings for all, such as SEN meetings which involve complex language. Taking this service away could be discriminatory.
Stop with the letter translation service. Google translate can be used.
And visual posters for reminders such as PE Kit. Twinkl is a good source of posters and resources in lots of different languages and is a cheap subscription service that school could buy.
Sounds like the school does a lot already to help but times are tight and resources are scarce.
I worked for over 30 years in EAL schools and all these things have eroded badly over the years, but parents also have to do their bit to try and learn some basics.

Exactly LaDamaDeELche. Couldn’t agree more.

I agree. Theres simply no money, my friend moved abroad, it was up to them to learn the language, no support was given, they are all fluent now, theres lots of apps dvds classes.

I live in Spain and translation services aren’t offered here. You are expected to speak the language or bring someone with you who can. It’s fair enough really. If you live in a country you need to have at least a basic level of understanding of the language where you live. The overwhelming majority of countries do not provide these types of services in schools.

No it isn't. Yet there is a lot of "but what about UK expats abroad"...

Expats have received nothing like the same disapproval. from your own post.
It's logical UK expats abroad will not recieve same amount of disapproval for not learning language on mainly UK based forum as immigrants to UK do. They recieve it at the host country X. Same like expats from country X will not recieve dissaproval for not integrating in host country Y by their people in X but will from people in Y.
To put it simply, people disapprove of problems that affect them mainly. Behavior UK expat to Lebanon will not affect UK based people, so the Lebanese moan. While Lebanese exlat to UK will affect UK based people hence they moan while Lebanese don't. Level of dissaproval is based on how it affects people around them.

It's the first time I hear of a school to do it, where I was it was parents responsibility to bring a translator wif they could not be bothered to learn a word of English, usually they had to bring a family member or a friend who did.
That being said, if a member of staff spoke the language, usually we would use them.But never paid for an external translator.

Sure but this thread isn't about that, is it

UK (and other) expats not integrating recieve the same disapproval by many in their host countries, but you don't see that from here understandably

Huh? Normal human social behaviour isn't really a choice or 'preference' as you call it

PP have said thro' the whole thread in so many different ways some more subtle than others that these parents are 'bad'!! Expats have received nothing like the same disapproval. Who are you trying to kid?

The major and hugely obvious difference between these 2 groups of people are not their morality but their financial resources/experience of adversity

It's just normal human social behaviour not unique to these lazy entitled parents who have been vilified throughout this thread
And, as far as I'm concerned, they can do whatever they like. I don't care. I just don't want Society to pay for their preference.

I would never move to France and expect the school to provide a translator for me. It's my responsibility to understand what they're saying.

"You feel uneasy by this zero tolerance approach". But it's not zero tolerance at all.